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William Patrick Kinsella, a Canadian author of stories and novels, has attracted fans internationally with his imaginative and humorous fictions. He claims that the combination of reading and loneliness stirred his creativity. Being alone he needed to entertain himself and did so by reading and writing. This turned him into an admirable author. His most famous novel Shoeless Joe is said to be “a balancing act sustained by the absolutely fearless, sentimentality-risking honesty of the author” (Collier 135). This story portrays the economic problems of the 70’s and 80’s. Kinsella also uses the theme of going for your dreams and the main conflict of man versus society. During the 1970’s, America was enduring an economic recession it had not seen since the Great Depression. By 1982, the unemployment rate hit 10.8%. At this time approximately twelve million Americans were out of a job and had no income (Moss 317). For example, before Ray bought the farm in Iowa, he went to college and chose to be a life insurance salesman. However, he was unable to find a job (Kinsella 10). Ray was one of the millions of people who had troible finding work during the 1980’s. Kinsella is trying to show that during this time of